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City uncertain of impact of minimum wage hike

City hall will be hit with a big wage increase bill in the new year as some part-time, temporary and seasonal workers will be entitled to pay equal to that of full-time staff when performing the same job.
Staff are now calculating the impending 2018 budget implications being triggered by Bill 148, the Fair Workplaces Act, coupled with the minimum wage jumping to $14 per hour Jan. 1.
City treasurer Brian Cousins said wage expenditures will definitely be increasing.
“We’re working on a fairly detailed analysis for council when we do the budget,” Cousins said. “There are so many things about Bill 148.”
Cousins said he would be speculating as to what the final figure will be, but council will be called upon to find revenue to cover the bill.
Council has instructed staff to cap the city’s portion of the operation budget to a 1.5 per cent increase in 2018. City internal department spending accounts for about 60 per cent of the overall budget, with external agencies, like police, social and emergency services, eating up the rest.
“We have Bill 148 that’s going to hit us and that’s significant,” he said. “It’s going to make it more difficult, without any service cuts.”
Tim Osborne, manager of human resources, provided a preliminary picture on the dozens of staff across several departments who will be looking to capitalize on the changing workplace rules.
He said the parks group brings on about 25 to 30 casuals per year and public works is about the same. There are four temporary bus operators, working full-time hours.
There are some part-time staff working in the recreation department, but they’re typically instructors.
“You could have 30 or 40 people but they work an hour here and an hour there based on registration and programming,” Osborne said, adding there is also about 10 facility attendants working at city arenas.
“That kind of gives you ballpark,” Osborne said. “Summer camps require about 25 students each year. We have looked at part-time wage student salary grid, to make those adjustments for Jan. 1 for the $14 wage rate.”
Coun. Mitch Panciuk has been asking staff for details on what the budget implications will be.
“I don’t think anyone really understands the true cost consequence of this act,” he said. “The province has imposed these increased costs on municipalities and they have not given us any better ability to fund it.”
Municipalities have been exempt from emergency service staff, like volunteer firefighters and on-call snowplow operators demanding similar wage to the full-time counterparts.
“We did dodge bit of a bullet by having the emergency services exemption,” he said.